United States v. Mesa’s Empirical Analysis
62 F.3d 159 · 1995
Citation profile
75 federal appellate · 2 district · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 159 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably United States v. Hill (1999), United States v. Givan (2003)
75 federal appellate · 2 district · 28 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Lane v. Peterson · Adair v. United States · 115 S. Ct. 89 - Green v. United States · United States v. Ferguson · United States v. Hernandez-Alvarado
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 159 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Once the purposes of the initial traffic stop were completed, there is no doubt that the officer could not further detain the vehicle or its occupants unless something that occurred during the traffic stop generated the necessary reasonable suspicion to justify a further detention.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]lthough there is always a temptation in cases of this nature when ... drugs and firearms are found to let the end justify the means,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[N]ervousness is ... not a ground sufficient in and of itself.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.